Three miles from Truckee, Nevada County, California, lies one of the
fairest and most picturesque lakes in all the Sierra. Above, and on
either side, are lofty mountains, with casteliated granite crests, while
below, at the mouth of the lake, a grassy, meadowy valley widens out and
extends almost to Truckee. The body of water is three miles long, one
and a half miles wide, and four hundred and eighty-three feet in depth.
Tourists and picnic parties annually flock to its shores, and Bierstadt
has made it the subject of one of his finest, grandest paintings. In
summer, its willowy thickets, its groves of tamarack and forests of
pine, are the favorite haunts and nesting places of the quail and
grouse. Beautiful, speckled mountain trout plentifully abound in its
crystalline waters. A rippling breeze usually wimples and dimples its
laughing surface, but in calmer moods it reflects, as in a polished
mirror, the lofty, overhanging mountains, with every stately pine,
bounding rivulet; blossoming shrub, waving fern, and - high above all,
on the right - the clinging, thread-like line of the snow-sheds of the
Central Pacific. When the railroad was being constructed, three thousand
people dwelt on its shores; the surrounding forests resounded with the
music of axes and saws, and the terrific blasts exploded in the lofty,
o'ershadowing cliffs, filled the canyons with reverberating thunders,
and hurled huge bowlders high in the air over the lake's quivering
bosom.
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